Tag Archives: Topic: Prayer

Fox News Insider: Kerri Kupec, legal communications director for the ADF, joined Ainsley Earhardt on “Fox and Friends Weekend” this morning and said it’s a sad day when our schools are censoring students and shutting down the exchange of ideas.

CBN News: The ADF has filed a federal lawsuit Friday arguing: “Public schools should encourage the free exchange of ideas. Instead, this school implemented an ill-conceived ban that singles out religious speech for censorship during free time.”

Ecumenical News: “He was told that he could no longer pray with his fellow students during free time because of the separation of church and state,” said Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney representing the teenager.

The Blaze: “Public schools should encourage the free exchange of ideas,” said attorney Jeremy Tedesco. “Instead, this school implemented an ill-conceived ban that singles out religious speech for censorship during free time.”

The Washington Times: “Public schools should encourage the free exchange of ideas. Instead, this school implemented an ill-conceived ban that singles out religious speech for censorship during free time,” said ADF senior legal counsel Jeremy Tedesco in a statement.

ADF Media: Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed suit in federal court Friday on behalf of a Pine Creek High School senior told that he and a group of other students may no longer informally meet to pray and discuss religious topics during free time as they have for the past three years.

The Christian Post: “Religious speech is expressly protected by the First Amendment, and public schools have no business stopping students from praying together during their free time,” ADF Legal Counsel Matt Sharp said in a statement posted on the ADF website.

Christian News Network: “During the free time, students are permitted to engage in a virtually unlimited variety of activities, including gathering with other students inside or outside; reading; sending text messages to their friends; playing games on their phone; visiting the bathrooms; getting a snack; visiting teachers; and conducting official meetings of school clubs,” states Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Christian legal organization representing Windebank outlines.

Charisma News: “He was told that he could no longer pray with his fellow students during free time because of the separation of church and state,” said Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney representing the teenager.

The Global Dispatch: “Religious speech is expressly protected by the First Amendment, and public schools have no business stopping students from praying together during their free time,” ADF Legal Counsel Matt Sharp said in a statement posted on the ADF website.

WND: “Far from being unconstitutional, religious speech is expressly protected by the First Amendment,” says ADF Legal Counsel Matt Sharp, “and public schools have no business stopping students from praying together during their free time.”

SRN News (Reuters): “Public schools should encourage the free exchange of ideas,” Alliance Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco said in a statement on Monday, after the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on Friday.

Breitbart: According to a Reuters report, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the lawsuit against Pine Creek High School near Colorado Springs for their ban on religious speech during recess and other “open periods.”

Reformedish: Republican or Democrat, whoever did or didn’t win in your district, whatever idiotic ballot proposals did or didn’t pass, you as a Christian have at least one clear command about how to respond to the midterm elections: pray for whoever’s coming in.

The Christian Post: Persecution watchdog group Open Doors warned that the exodus of Christians in Iraq and Syria fleeing terror group ISIS reached “biblical proportions” this year, and called for Christian unity during the International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church on Sunday.

The State: “I contacted and showed the policy to one of the attorneys that defended Greece, N.Y. (Alliance Defending Freedom) and he liked the policy with some minor changes, and those changes were incorporated in the policy,” Saitta added. “In total I’ve talked to six or seven attorneys on this issue.”

Opposing Views: “Simply hearing another pray burdens no one,” Brett Harvey, of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm, told Campus Reform. “Limiting the way a person is able to pray suppresses religious freedom. True freedom permits a prayer giver to choose for themselves how to pray, while permitting those to hear it the liberty to agree, disagree, or disregard.”

The Christian Post: Christians are being urged to come together on the International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church on Sunday, with persecution watchdog group Open Doors noting that hostilities against believers this year have reached unprecedented levels in modern times.

Campus Reform: “Simply hearing another pray, burdens no one,” Brett Harvey from the Alliance Defending Freedom told Campus Reform.”Limiting the way a person is able to pray suppresses religious freedom. True freedom permits a prayer giver to choose for themselves how to pray, while permitting those to hear it the liberty to agree, disagree, or disregard.”

My Fox 8 (Winston-Salem Journal): Brett Harvey, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said it is not surprising that the court set a hearing, and he said he thinks it indicates that the judge is interested in hearing more fully how the recent ruling affects his court order.

Christian News Network: Coach-led prayers are no longer allowed at a high school in South Dakota after a prominent atheist activist organization sent a letter of complaint asking that the practice be discontinued.

The Christian Post: Legal ministry Alliance Defending Freedom counters claims that prayer during public meetings violates the Establishment Clause. According to ADF, such assertions “intentionally mis-frames the analysis.” Instead, the ADF holds that “legislative prayers serve the legitimate secular purposes of solemnizing public occasions, expressing confidence in the future, and encouraging the recognition of what is worthy of appreciation in society, and have never been understood as conveying government approval of particular religious beliefs.”

ADF Media: Alliance Defending Freedom is making available a legal memo that explains and reinforces the First Amendment freedom of students and teachers to participate in “Fields of Faith” Oct. 8. In 2004, Fellowship of Christian Athletes developed Fields of Faith, an annual, student-organized, and student-led gathering at school athletic fields after school where students read the Bible, hear testimonies, worship, and pray for each other.

The Daily Caller: Earlier this season, the university rejected the demands of anti-religion interest groups to stop Tennessee’s tradition of observing a moment of non-denominational prayer praying before kickoff. The group went so far as to refer to this tradition of pre-game prayer as “really very grating”. Such attacks on religion and prayer in the public square are not new.

Religion News Service: About 13 percent of Americans who pray say they pray for sports teams, compared with about one in five (21 percent) who say they have prayed to win the lottery, the new survey from LifeWay Research suggests.

The Christian Post: ADF states that “legislative prayers serve the legitimate secular purposes of solemnizing public occasions, expressing confidence in the future, and encouraging the recognition of what is worthy of appreciation in society, and have never been understood as conveying government approval of particular religious beliefs.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is making available a legal memo that explains and reinforces the First Amendment freedom of students to participate in Wednesday’s “See You at the Pole” event. SYATP is an annual, student-organized, and student-led gathering held at school flagpoles around the world that provides students with the opportunity to pray for their school, friends, teachers, government, and nation.

Christian News Network: The superintendent of a school district in Ohio has put an end to a prayer chain that had been running between a local principal and teachers at his school, which served as a means to support the sick and abused.

Yahoo News (The Christian Science Monitor): In every season since 1930, the Oneida, Tenn., high school football games have begun with a prayer. But this year, based on legal advice, the school chose not to begin the games with an invocation via the public address system.

The Washington Times (AP): Abortion opponents confidently prayed for success Wednesday at the Missouri Capitol as lawmakers convened to try to override a veto of one of the nation’s longest abortion-waiting periods.

Tri-City Herald: “I suspect there’d be some legal difficulties in dictating who someone prays to,” said Brett Harvey, senior counsel for Alliance for Defending Freedom, a nonprofit that advocates for religion in government.

Raw Story: Even Brett Harvey, senior counsel for Alliance for Defending Freedom, a group that advocates for a greater religious presence in government, said that Trumbo’s interpretation of the decision was unsound. “I suspect there’d be some legal difficulties in deciding who someone prays to,” he toldThe Herald.

Zenit: Faced with the barbarity of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), many Christians are left wondering, “What can we do to help our brothers and sisters in Christ who are being persecuted for their beliefs?” The International Prayer and Fasting Coalition is urging people of all faiths to a worldwide prayer and fasting campaign for peace Sept. 20-28.

Winston-Salem Journal: The parties are now waiting for U.S. District Court Judge James A. Beaty Jr. to act. He could make a determination based on the briefs or could schedule a hearing, said Brett Harvey, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. “What happens next is in the hands of the judge,” Harvey said.

Democrat & Chronicle: The rules mirror a model policy from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization that represented the town in the Supreme Court case. Brett Harvey, the group’s senior counsel, said allowing anyone to speak “made sense when the town had a manageable number of people making a request.” Now Greece needed a neutral way to select speakers, he said.

Religion News Service: This case is bringing together a diverse coalition that includes the Anti-Defamation League, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Alliance Defending Freedom, several social scientists, and even the U.S. government.

Christian News Network: Approximately 200 students at a Georgia high school and their parents gathered to pray on the football field Wednesday—with an even larger gathering on Thursday—in response to a letter from a national humanist organization that threatened possible legal action if the school’s coaches continue “promot[ing] Christianity.”

Huffington Post: A day after the American Humanist Association threatened to sue a Georgia school district for permitting coaches to use the football program to promote religious acts and messages, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) lashed out against “liberal atheist interest groups” Wednesday for “trying to bully” high schoolers.

The Christian Post: The American Humanist Association (AHA) is about to learn a very important lesson — folks around Gainesville, Georgia don’t take kindly to out-of-town atheists trying to bully their children.

Winston-Salem Journal: Brett Harvey, senior counsel with the Alliance, said Tuesday that counsel would file a reply in the next few weeks. He said courts had already recognized that the county’s policy was inclusive, and that it was the content of the prayers that they had found problematic.

Religion Clause: After the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Town of Greece case last May, a number of local governments that had been enjoined by lower courts from opening council meetings with sectarian prayers petitioned lower courts to dissolve or modify the injunctions.

Santa Maria Sun: The Alliance Defending Freedom offers pro bono, or free, legal help to cities that want to keep their invocations. The organization’s lawyers will help cities draft invocation policies that comply with California and federal law.

The Christian Post: A South Carolina school board is considering a return to a prayer policy similar to Town of Greece, New York after the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of sectarian prayers at public meetings.

The Washington Times: David Cortman, director of litigation and senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, welcomed the ruling, noting that the high court said it is important to look at the historical practice of anything being challenged. “It’s difficult to say a practice that’s 200 years old is now unconstitutional because of a test framed 40 years ago,” Mr. Cortman said.

MyFox8: Forsyth County is asking a federal court to dissolve a 2010 injunction that stopped the county from allowing pastors to give invocations that had sectarian references at the start of public county meetings, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

Alliance Defending Freedom: After winning a lawsuit last month at the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of prayers before public meetings, Alliance Defending Freedom is now asking a federal district court to lift its order against the prayer policy of Forsyth County, N.C. The order requires the county to censor the way people pray to ensure only generic prayers are offered at public meetings.

National Review: The Supreme Court has been pondering for a long time what to do with the pending petition to review Elmbrook School District v. Doe. In Elmbrook, a Milwaukee-area high school decided to hold its graduation ceremony at a large nondenominational church because the school’s cramped gymnasium with no air conditioning lacked adequate space for those coming to see the graduation. Although the graduation contained no religious activity at all, activists still sued the school district, claiming that the mere presence of a cross on the church’s stage rendered the facility constitutionally toxic for the public school event. The Seventh Circuit, sitting en banc, agreed.

Acton Institute: The president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, Alan Sears, writes: “Religious coercion was a great concern to the Founders, and rightly so.” Sears reminds us that the Founding Fathers took the idea of “coercion” seriously, “and did not dumb it down to include being ‘offended.’”

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